REVIEW: Here and Now [2018]

First a tragedy. Then a miracle. The news ain’t good. Famed vocalist Vivienne Carala (Sarah Jessica Parker) is on the cusp of a world tour for her latest (and ninth) album only to find herself in a hospital waiting room calling her manager (Common‘s Ben) to say she’s going to be late for rehearsal. She is to celebrate her twenty-fifth anniversary of playing at Birdland with multiple concerts beginning the very next day, an auspicious occasion even her well-known French mother Jeanne (Jacqueline Bisset) has decided to attend. And yet…

Read More

REVIEW: Murder on the Orient Express [1974]

With the help of a hat box. If the way in which Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) manipulates his suspects into perfectly incriminating themselves upon inquisition—often unbeknownst to us until the final reveal—infers that he has a photographic memory, we the audience need a bit more exposition as it concerns yet unseen connections than perhaps the film would like to share. This is why director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paul Dehn provide an opening montage of newspaper clippings and shadowy reenactments of young Daisy Armstrong’s kidnapping and subsequent murder. Because it…

Read More